• 12​ 07​ 2018 •Meine Wunschdomain - Oracle

19:00
Academyspace, Herwarthstraße 3, 50672 Köln

The Performance is part of WILD THINGS - sounds and narratives

The two artists Knut Schultz and Julia Nietzsche are the performance duo Meine Wunschdomain. They founded their agency for applied performance art in 2013.
In keeping with the saying “sharing is caring,” with this agency Knut and Julia act as an oracle and share with their audience successful and wonderful artistic strategies for everyday use. They draw on strategies from their own theatre and performance work and also feature other artists in their oracle sessions. Chance plays a part in their work (also an artistic strategy as popular as it is challenging) – though invariably they notice that it really doesn’t exist, since by the end of the visit everyone always receives the right answer…

Engaging their diverse spectrum of interests and experience mixed with media-based magic, Wunschdomain cultivates the proper context in which to generate concrete and optimistic strategies for resistance and perseverance. The performance oracle sessions are focussed on radical narratives and visions of a future that is worth living (and enjoying) by all, as well the unequivocal wish to stand FOR something. Julia and Knut are staunch in their belief that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and they love the various interpretations of this idea. Their previous oracle sessions each involved pragmatic works with a heightened assertion of reality, and thus a reliance on theater. They also believe that the power of narratives can only be accessed by sharing them. This approach leads to another understanding of art that Wunschdomain fosters and calls for, so that a theatre that sees itself as a productive communicative service nevertheless maintains its claims to illusion. As regards content, it is important to not follow the trend of critical recountings of the current state of affairs but rather dare to replace prevalent dystopian scenarios with utopian moments and images.

Julia Nitschke completed her studies in social work in Bochum in 2011. Having also studied theatre and social science along the way, she graduated with a master’s degree in scenic research at Ruhr-University Bochum in 2018. She is co-organiser and curator of the Rundlauf Festival in Bochum and participated in the fourth edition of Mülheim Fatzer Tage in 2014 with the performative installation work “Absagen an Krieg” (Rejection of war) in collaboration with Helene Ewert. In 2016 this project was further developed under the title “Absagen an die Festung Europa” (Rejection of fortress Europe) at the Asphaltfestival in Düsseldorf. She is part of the artist collective run and curated by atelier automatique in Bochum.

Ruth Schultz is a freelance theatre-maker and works in various contexts as a mixed media artist. After working as assistant director in Cologne and Bonn (at fringe ensemble, among others) and finishing literary studies at the University of Florence, she completed her studies in theatre directing at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen in 2011. She realises performative and film-based works, sound pieces, and documentary projects, finding joy in magical moments and the all too human media arts. She is artistic director and co-founder of the experimental music theatre production company Paradeiser Productions, which is active in the independent art scene and in municipal theatre.

The number of participants is limited, please register under: youthacademy_at_academycologne_._org